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Oral History
of
Paul W. Handy
Interviewed by:
Jerry Grover
Name: Paul William Handy
Date of Interview: March 21, 2000
Location of Interview: Home of Paul & Jean Handy
Vancouver, Washington
Interviewer: Jerry C. Grover
Years worked for Fish and Wildlife Service:
1958 - 1985
Offices and Field Stations Worked, Positions Held:
New London NFH, Minnesota – Biologist Trainee
Spearfish NFH, SD – Fishery Biologist
Valley City NFH, ND – Fishery Biologist
Marion, AL - In-Service Warm Water Fish Culture Training
School
Hebron NFH, OH – Assistant Hatchery Manager
Senecaville NFH, OH – Assistant Hatchery Manager
Washington, D.C. – Departmental Manager Development
Program
Garrison NFH, ND – Hatchery Manager
Alchesay NFH, AZ – Fish Hatchery Manager
Portland Regional Office, OR - Fishery Program – Operations
Portland Regional Office, OR - Fishery Program, Columbia
River Coordinator
Most Important Projects:
Warm & Cool water Fish Culture, Tribal Fishery Programs,
Lower Snake River Compensation Program, Columbia River
Fishery Program
Colleagues and Mentors:
Ansel Holloway, Howard Larsen, Galan Buterbaugh
Most Important Issues:
Pacific Coast Hatchery Construction Program, Pacific Salmon
Culture & Management Issues
ABSTRACT: Paul was a National Fish Hatchery person/
hatchery man. He began a comprehensive hatchery-oriented
career culturing a wide range of warm, cool, cold water species
throughout the U.S. that led to managerial jobs and a training
assignment in Washington, D.C. This experience led to being a
go-to person in the Portland Regional Office for the Columbia
River Basin’s expansive hatchery building and operation
programs requiring close coordination and astute political savvy
with the region’s Native American Tribes, the Northwest states
and other Federal agencies.
2
THE ORAL HISTORY
JG: This is Jerry Grover, a retired Ecological Services & Fishery supervisor in the Portland Regional Office and I am in Vancouver, Washington to do an oral history in the home of Paul W. Handy regarding his Fishery Program career with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. With us today is Paul’s wife Jean. Paul where were you born and raised?
PH: Good morning, Jerry. Paul Handy’s my name. I was born in Minneapolis in 1930, and I went to school at the University of Minnesota. Well, I graduated from high school in ‘48. I started at the University of Minnesota and I went two years, and I was such an outstanding student they thought that maybe I should, to be honest with you, I wasn’t on the dean’s list. I was flunking! I wanted to stay in school because I didn’t want to go into the Army. They told me, school is no longer a valid excuse for me because my grades were so poor. I decided that since I don’t want to go in the Army, I’m going down and enlist in the Navy. When I went down there, the Navy was full. The only people that were available was the Air Force, so I went in the Air Force for about almost four years.
When I came back and got back into the University of Minnesota it was by the sheer grace of God and a guy by the name of Doc <unclear>, who said, “Okay, we’ll give you one more chance,” and I started out trying to go into forestry. That didn’t work because there were so many people in forestry already that it was essentially an overcrowded field, and they said, “Well, have you thought about Fish and Wildlife?” No I hadn’t thought about Fish and Wildlife, but if I can get a job, it’s better than being in forestry, so I ended up in fisheries and majored in fisheries. I’ll brag a little bit and say I graduated with a B average for about five years of college.
JG: What did you do at the Air Force?
PH: I ended up being in a mapping outfit, the 66th <unclear> Squadron. I was a Staff Sergeant, and I supervised a section on aerial photo reconnaissance. We put, we took pictures, the airplanes took the pictures and we put them together, and we made maps out of what we put together.
JG: This is for what, target, for targeting?
PH: Yeah, for a lot of things.
JG: Any wars going on at that time?
PH: No, there was no wars going on at that time where I was, but we got shot at occasionally by the Russians because we were right along the border, and essentially trying to take pictures into the Russian occupied sector in Germany and we could... . We could do a pretty good job of it because we could shoot in, depending on weather conditions, 50 to 100 miles, and I’m sure what they we’re looking for is launching sites for various pieces of whatever Russia was assembling along the border, and you know, conditions weren’t really that good. It was 1951.
JG: Was the U-2 on board then. Were they taking the pictures or is that after?
PH: I think that was afterward a little while, but we could see, and there are ways, for what they were doing. No, I don’t think the U-2 was a big factor in surveillance at that time. I’m not sure of that, but I’m pretty sure.
JG: Sounds like you grew up a little bit in the military.
PH: Yeah. There was a lot of growing up.
Jean Handy: Two babies will do it.
PH: Yeah, two babies and having your back against the wall, and you come a long ways. Then I went to work for, the guy that hired me was probably the greatest individual that I have known in the Fish and Wildlife Service. His name is Ansel Holloway, and if there was ever a people’s manager, he was it. He was absolutely beyond!
He was actually one of the best individuals I have ever known, and I took the, whatever the entrance exam is, I don’t even know what they call it. I remember with my five point veteran preference, I was way up the list and could easily qualify first, second, or third once I had the diploma in my hand, okay. So Ansel then interviewed about four of us, and he said it was really quite easy because you’ve got to hire a three. So I was hired, but I couldn’t go to work until I had the ‘magic pigskin’ in my hand that says I have a Bachelor, a BS in Fisheries. Well, they drug their feet and what have you, but I finally did get it and started to work at New London, Minnesota [National Fish Hatchery] on about the 15th of March I think, in 1958, as a GS-5. I’m trying to remember how much I got.
JG: Was it about $3650?
PH: No, no, it was less than that, but it very quickly rose to 3650 [dollars]. It was about 29 [hundred] something, and the reason I paid so much attention to how much they paid is all the guys in high school that I had graduated with, several of them hadn’t gone into the military.
There were two or three that thought I was just absolutely out of my mind going back to college, and then I told them I was going to make $3,000 a year and they almost rolled on the floor they laughed so damn hard. This one guy in particular, he was putting in septic systems. Hell, he was making money hand over fist, and he said, “You’re crazy.” He said, “Come work with me.” He says, “You’ll get $10,000 a year,” and at that time $10,000 was a lot of money. But anyway, I went to New London and Ansel Holloway had laid out for me a three year training program in which I would be at one hatchery for six or eight 3
months and another hatchery for six or eight months and so on and so forth, and he tried to give me experience in two kinds of warm water fish culture and then cold water culture <unclear>, and that’s what I did.
JG: Was Ansel Holloway a hatchery manager, or was he a supervisor in Minneapolis?
PH: He was a hatchery supervisor in Minneapolis. Really great, great individual
JG: It sounds like he was kind of a mentor to you.
PH: Oh boy, was he ever!
JG: And were there others, too?
PH: Yeah, I’m sure that almost everybody that came to you. Howard Larsen, for example. He was a mentor to all the people that came to him. He ended up as a Regional Director.
Then there was Galan Buterbaugh. Yeah, but everyone knew Ansel. I don’t know of a single, Bob Stevens in Albuquerque. I don’t know of a soul that was associated with that guy that didn’t think he just almost walked on water. Honestly, he never told you anything to egg you on to do something. Everything he said he could back up and did. A wonderful individual. He came through here a couple of years before he died. I spent an afternoon with him and thoroughly enjoyed it. But he’s a great guy, was a great guy, to get on with what in the hell I did.
JG: But he laid out a training program or development plan for you...
PH: Yeah, for the hatcheries, all in Region 3. I worked at New London NFH, and that was bass, bluegill, and primarily for the Farm Pond Program. Then I went to Spearfish [National Fish Hatchery, South Dakota, and that was all trout, and I worked there for about six or eight months. Then I went to Valley City [National Fish Hatchery], North Dakota, and that was northern pike and walleye, a few largemouth bass. Most of the bluegills we got out of New London and did our farm pond distribution from that. Then I went to Marion National Fish Hatchery, Alabama for the training course under Jack Snow.
JG: That was the Warm Water Fish Cultural School down there in Marion, Alabama.
PH: Right, and then we went back to, let’s see, Hebron [National Fish Hatchery], Ohio. Roy Crandall was the manager there, and that was bass, bluegill, and a channel catfish program. That’s where I started, that’s where I really became interested in catfish, and lived on the hatchery there and spent the weekends feeding catfish and never thought anything about it. There was no overtime pay. There was no special consideration except we only paid $12 every two weeks for our rent of a hatchery house. So I figured it was about, you know, kind of a break even situation.
JG: Were all those stations that you were at, Valley City, Spearfish, and all, did they have hatchery housing?
PH: They all had hatchery housing, but I was the lowest guy on the totem pole, and let’s see, I did not live at a hatchery house at any three of those stations.
And it was, well it was a little bit tough getting by. We had a couple of kids, and let’s see, when we were at Spearfish, she spawned another one. Up to three kids on a GS-7 salary, but we made it along all right.
After we got out of Marion -- Marion was really good in the respect that I got to work with or talk to people from other regions in warm water fish culture, and come to find out they had some damn good ideas, but we also had some good ideas. I found out that their approach to farm pond program management, I won’t say was totally different than ours, but it sure was a lot different in, in that they seemed to have one heck of a lot more contact with the Soil Conservation Service than we ever did. The Soil Conservation Service was pushing farm pond programs really hard for you know, reduction of runoff and siltation and so forth and so on. Okay, at Hebron I got promoted when I got out of school to a 7, and then I just thought life couldn’t be much better than that. At that time I was supposed to be in training and learning how to do the books, you know, pay the bills, do the books, all this and that plus...
JG: Obviously the day before secretaries and clerks in a hatchery.
PH: Yeah, oh yeah. But I was more interested in the fish production program, and with what I learned at Marion I thought, ‘Well hell, there’s no problem to this fish production, it’s simple.’ Well, I found out that it’s a little more difficult than you
really think it is. But we got into upgrading the bass stock with artificially inseminating goldfish and lots of things and were very successful in raising the production of Hebron.
But at about that time, the guy at Senecaville retired, Jim Walsh was his name. Senecaville [National Fish Hatchery], Ohio. The Regional Office wanted to know if I’d take a job in Senecaville as a GS-9, and I says, ‘Oh great, you bet as a 9 I’ll take a job there.’ “Well, when can you move?” I said, ‘Well yesterday I could be there.’ So lock, stock, and barrel, right in the middle of the production season, off we go. Three kids and my wife pregnant again, and Holy Christ, I don’t know what all happened, but we got there and there was a new house being built, and it was, you know, you walk into something like that and you think, “Oh my God, it’ a total calamity.” But we got busy on a catfish-rearing program, which was a heck of a lot of fun. We caught catfish out of the reservoir and spawned them, and that’s where I got to meet and know Kermit Sneed.
JG: When you talk about spawning catfish you’re talking about putting them in milk cans, or did you have pens?
PH: No, we had pens and had cans and pens so that you could pair them up the way...
PH: And Kermit gave us a lot of help. I remember we had some kind of a disease and now it’s, what is it CCVD [(channel catfish viral disease)]. Anyway, it’s a virus disease of catfish and I called up trying to get some answers, and this was a Friday 4
afternoon, and I think Kermit was at Stuttgart. I’m not sure. But anyway, I got a hold of him.
JG: Kermit Sneed, the director at Stuttgart Fish Health Research Laboratory, Arkansas?
PH: Yes, and he said, “Well, I can’t be up there much before Saturday afternoon.” I said, ‘Jesus Christ, it’s Friday.’ I said, ‘Where can you be?’ He said, “What’s the nearest airport,” and so I told him, and so I met him in Columbus, Ohio, on a Saturday afternoon. That guy fooled around with those catfish, looking at them and getting the history and everything else. I think I went to bed about 3:30 that day, that Sunday morning, and I thought, ‘ Holy smokes,’ this guy is about the most dedicated individual I’ve ever seen. Well, he slept up in the house and like 6:30 in the morning I hear him up talking to my wife, and you know, after a whole big three hours sleep. To make a long story short, I got him on the airplane later on that afternoon, and he told us what to do. We did it, brought the fish out of it, we got the fish healthy enough to where they started eating again. I then began to realize that there’s a lot of people working in the Fish and Wildlife Service that work in it for something more than money. He didn’t ask who was going to pay for the travel, anything. He just came up and did his job and went home. At the end of Senecaville tour, I went to Washington DC in that Management Development Training course, and that would be around 1961, I think.
JG: And you were still a GS-9 then?
PH: Yes.
JG: I think they had, what, they had the junior development training program and the middle management and the senior?
PH: I was in middle management. No, wait a minute. I think the junior was GS-7 & 9 and the middle course was GS-11 to 12's. I was in junior management then because I was a GS-9. But that was a pretty good deal because they paid you a fair...
JG: $6 a day as I recall.
PH: I don’t know something like that, but at any rate we went there. There were 4 kids, my daughter was already born. She was born in Senecaville. Anyway, we went there for nine months, and they put the customary pressure on me to stay. I don’t know Jerry, I just, I didn’t like it. So I went back to Senecaville for about two weeks before I was assigned a new hatchery in Garrison, North Dakota. Now that was a northern pike and walleye hatchery.
JG: That was part of the Garrison Diversion Project, the dam.
PH: Right, right. Now, as far as a mitigation hatchery, as per what we have here in the west, that was not. But the [Bureau] of Reclamation did go to bat for the Fish and Wildlife Service to obtain money for O[peration] and M[aintenance]. So I don’t know exactly what you call it . It would be a kind of a half of mitigation project. Anyway, the operation and hatchery and everything else was all contained into the budget for that Garrison complex, for the Garrison Diversion and the whole bit.
I’m thinking I went there in about ‘63, someplace, 1962 to ’63. I worked with the State of North Dakota. Had a very good relationship with them. We had probably the most successful northern pike production program in the United States. Keen Buss from Pennsylvania came out and actually worked with us for better than a week, week and a half, and for a guy of that stature to come out and take a look at our operation, it was kind of ego inflating I’ll say that. One of the things that we had that they did not have is we had a supply of northern pike that must have looked to everybody like the national debt because we had hundreds of female fish to pick from. I mean, we didn’t have to spawn 30 pounders. We didn’t have to spawn five pounders. We could take a nice female, eight to ten pounds, spawn it, and away we went, and that’s what we did, and there, it’s a nice size fish to work with. You don’t rupture eggs, and we had a very successful program.
JG: Were you using injections at that time, using gonadotropin or anything?
PH: No, not at all!
JG: You were just taking them right, just picking from the ripe females and males.
PH: We caught the fish in the reservoir, which is sometimes kind of a cold, halfway dangerous job in that you’re out there in the wind and a big, flat boat. But we had a good, a good situation. And so, I wrote a paper on propagation of northern pike. I don’t know whatever happened to it. I can tell you off the record what happened to it: essentially no trout production. We had a little Mickey Mouse program, 45 or 40,000 pounds there at Garrison though, but I can’t really say we were busting our hump producing trout.
JG: These were catchables?
PH: Yeah, mostly catchables. We had I’d say all catchables, and it was a, it was a little different program. But we had a good water supply, and we weren’t pushing the facility to the maximum, so we didn’t have lots of disease problems, and we just, it was an interesting. But I didn’t feel like it was overly challenging. I had a lot more interest in trying to get a muskie [muskellunge] program off the ground and do a little bit better job of raising northern pike, because we had a heck of a time with, you know, predation on themselves in the ponds.
JG: In the ponds, yeah, and if you leave them in there long enough, you come out with two big fish.
PH: Right, right. We beat some of those problems, but it was interesting. It was always something new, and we did a lot of things experimentally that probably should have been written up just because they failed. But at any rate, it was a fun time. And then I got an offer to go down, well by that time I had made a GS-11, and then got an offer to go to Alchesay [National Fish Hatchery in Arizona] as a GS-12. On the White River Indian Reservation, and being money hungry, I guess, maybe not money hungry necessarily, but feeling that if I was ever going to go any place I better get some experience with a different kind of fish culture, and at Alchesay [it] was really a combined 5
establishment. It had two hatcheries, William’s Creek up on the top and Alchesay down below, and total production, about a half million or so pounds [of trout].
I was there for about a year, and it was a different experience in that I had never run into supervising a big minority workforce and we had a minority workforce in the form of Indians. I could not conform to their method of working. When I hire somebody to work eight hours a day, I expect them to work eight hours a day. So on the first two weeks I had the privilege of getting rid of nine of them, and I’m sure everybody on that hatchery figured the tenth one’s going to be me because, and I thought, well, the heck with it, you know. The Fish and Wildlife Service is paying them money and they’re not working. I caught guys sleeping on feed sacks. They’d come to work late. They wouldn’t have their keys, their hard hat. They wouldn’t be clean, all kinds of things, and I just fired them, and I thought, hey, you know, you conform. Well when I fired the tribal chairman’s son, they said, “Handy, you’re going to get the big one today,” and believe it or not, I did not. I think part of that has to do with my daughter and the Tribal chairman’s daughter were both five years old, and they were both in Head Start, and they were the best buddies in the whole world. So it was pretty hard for him to scream discrimination when our daughters were playing together.
At any rate, we got that situation all ironed out, and we ended up with a very, very, in my opinion, a good working crew of almost all Native Americans. I think our biologist, a guy by the name of Gene Forbes, who later became hatchery manager at Coleman NFH in California, was our fishery biologist. We had maybe two or three other white guys, but all told, a crew of 21. I think we had like 14 Native Americans, and darnn sharp guys. Guys that would work, get out on a truck and do the distribution, and I thought we had a good crew when I left.
JG: Did you have to change your management style a little bit to accommodate the Native Americans?
PH: Well, I tell myself I didn’t, but yes, I have to say that you do have to change. You don’t have to accept less, but you’ve got to try to think how they think and how they look to their friends. I mean, it’s not cool or whatever you might call it to be jumping up and down for, and doing everything that quote, “whitie” says. I don’t want to use that word too bad, but what I’m saying to you is they wanted very definitely to continue to be the proud race that they are and I had to be very careful not to talk down to them. I had not thought I had until I started, you know, taking a good look at myself and saying, “Hey, you don’t want to be treated that way, why are you treating them that way?” So in that respect maybe there was a little growing up on both sides, at least I thought on my side anyway. I think that’s very valuable for anybody that’s in the management end of it to try to understand what you’re, not who, but what kind of problems you’re dealing with, and for sure they do not look on happenings of the day like we look on happenings of the day, and understand that. They’re willing workers when they know what’s expected of them, and make sure they know what’s expected of them and you know, try to be absolutely honest with them.
By the time I transferred, well, maybe I’m blowing smoke, but I thought we had a heck of a good workforce. It was something that was kind of different for me, but I think we had a very good workforce. Then I came to Portland.
I took a job in the Regional Office in Portland, and “in operations,” unquote. That really meant that I was brought in here to take over Galan Buterbaugh’s job who was going to Washington, DC. He went into Washington, DC, and operations was really in all honesty being run by a fellow by a name of Bruce Cannady who was getting close to retirement and was very much more interested in hatchery construction than he was in the day’s operations of the hatcheries.
JG: I recall at that time there was a fairly active construction program. I mean, there were new hatcheries coming on line at Quinault and Kooskia.
PH: Yes, and at <Unclear>. Makah, Dworshak, Warm Springs. All new National Fish Hatcheries, plus the rebuilding of Spring Creek. Spring Creek NFH was being rebuilt and with some major change. There were some minor changes at other facilities, I’d say at Coleman. Leavenworth had a fairly big change. So yeah, Bruce was really the Fish and Wildlife Service hatchery representative for all agencies relating to construction, and there’s just no way that one guy can do all that with about eight or ten big projects ongoing and the operations. So I kind of herded the operations end of the program along and to start with it, it herded me. Then when I’d get into difficulties I’d go talk to Bruce and say, “Hey, what should I do,” and he’d get me squared away, and I’d go along just fat, dumb, and happy until I ran into another problem. But that lasted for about three or four years and then...
JG: When you talk about operations Paul, let me interject, did that include doing the budgeting system and getting the funding for the hatcheries, the cyclical maintenance, hiring, firing, training?
PH: No, I did not get into much of the training. In fact, Marv Smith, the ARD [Assistant Regional Director for Fisheries] did that, but anything related to money, maintenance --all of that was my responsibility. Now I’m not saying I had the final word on it, but I was the guy that put the budgets together, met with the hatchery manager, said, “Hey, what do you think this is, the Taj Mahal,” or whatever. John Miller, the other assistant, did the production part of it and we had a pretty good working relationship with most of the managers, I’ll say. That’s what I did for about four years. And then a fellow by the name of Bill Bien came in and he did a lot of my grunt work, so to speak, and I took over some of Bruce’s construction work, and about that time is when Bruce retired. Bruce saw through to the completion of Dworshak, I believe.
And even though I was still operations, so to speak, I was more involved in construction than I had to, than when I first arrived on board. Of course as time developed, these construction projects were being completed so there was less and less work, and that’s when I got all involved in this programming;, well, at that time it was zero-based budgeting and that kind.
JG: Why all the construction at that time? What was the philosophy at the time? Why were we building hatcheries? 6
PH: Well, for example, most of the work that the Corps of Engineers had done on the Snake River, these hatcheries were built as mitigation for fishery losses.
JG: Are you talking about the Lower Snake River Compensation Plan?
PH: I’m talking in part that, but when Dworshak was built, that is in essence a Corps mitigation project. The dam and reservoir. On the lower Columbia River at Spring Creek, the Corps came in and totally modified it. This was mitigation to enhance the production program at Spring Creek beyond the existing capacity. It was totally funded (the construction) by the Corps of Engineers.
JG: Okay, so basically when Spring Creek was reconstructed then, you say 50 percent was mitigation and 50 percent was enhancement?
PH: Right.
JG: And it was all part of the Bonneville Dam second powerhouse and part of the Corps original projects on the lower river.
PH: Yes, right.
PH: And then, of course I was involved as a Fish and Wildlife Service representative on all mitigation projects on the Columbia River, including the Snake River dam projects – the Lower Snake River Compensation Plan. You know, we had several hatcheries in Oregon, several in Idaho that the Corps built in addition to what we’re talking about.
JG: So the philosophy at the time is basically to seek mitigation for water and power development projects on the Columbia and Snake Rivers.
PH: In the enabling legislation the language was already there, and in like Ice Harbor, the dam had been constructed and was in operation for ten years before we even, before there was any work being done toward completion of a mitigation hatchery.
JG: To mitigate the impact of the dam.
PH: Right, yeah, and we were perturbed. How’s that? That’s not too bad, and the Corps was too. The Corps wasn’t dragging their feet, and they certainly had a money source, and so…that’s…everything got rolling then.
JG: Getting the Corps off the dime and getting the funding to begin the mitigation was turned into the Lower Snake Compensation Plan, and the ten or eleven hatcheries mostly operated by the states.
PH: Yes, except for the rebuilding and reconstruction of the Service’s Hagerman NFH. And Spring Creek, yeah, and that was all, that was all in the package, and that’s, okay…that’s…. I when I retired in ‘85, and that’s what was happening here in Portland at that time.
There was a, it was really a going proposition. I just cringe when I see what’s happening now. Everything has stopped! I don’t know what I can do about it.
JG: What do you see happening now?
PH: Well, I can see the end to a sport fishing salmon resource that generated millions of dollars for lots of people, and there was lots of enjoyment, and I, that’s almost a thing of the past. You cannot, right now, go fishing with any assurance, I mean, you couldn’t set a date right this minute to go fishing on the 20th of August in the ocean and even be sure that you have something to fish for in the line of salmon and anything else.
JG: And that’s different from what it used to be?
PH: Oh man, yeah, a lot different. You’re down to one fish limit right now, and maybe they won’t even have a season on some of these things, and that just tears my soul apart because I’m a sport fisherman, and to have a recreational endeavor like that just shot down, it’s a crying shame. But it’s not something the U.S. government had total control over. When you talk about, you know, the high seas fishery and the vulnerability of runs that are beyond the three mile limit and all the rest of it. Greed, I think, on the part of a lot of other countries play an important role. But at any rate, there is still some sport fishing.
JG: It seems like, Paul, you’ve been pretty much a hatchery person all your life.
PH: Yes, I have.
JG: And you’ve seen the construction, an active construction program in Region 1, in the Columbia River Basin, in the northwest in general. We mentioned Quinault and Makah, the tribal hatcheries, Warm Springs and other tribal hatcheries as well as the mitigation facilities, Lower Snake Comp Plan. Your perspective now, is there some sector of the Northwest you’re saying that hatcheries have been a cause for the demise of salmon? That’s an ongoing issue. Have you got a comment on that?
PH: You bet I’ve got several, but I don’t know how many are good for the record. I’m saying this: if you’re talking about the demise of the runs of salmon and are attempting to put the blame on hatchery fish, I think you’re barking up the wrong ladder. It’s impossible to me, for me to believe that if a hatchery fish leaves a hatchery, goes out to the ocean, survives two or three years in the saltwater and comes back, that it is any less prepared for the eventualities of spawning than quote, “a wild fish.” Now nobody’s been able to define for me what a wild fish is, because every fish that exists was once wild in its heritage. I don’t care how you cut it, and I believe this. I do not think the, quote “wild fish” survive any better, unquote, than the so called domestic hatchery fish. If we’re going to have sport fishing for the kind of ordinary guy that picks up his lunch pail and goes to work and comes home every night, if we’re going to have sport fishing for those kind of people, you’re going to absolutely have to have hatchery production because it, this is the only way that there’s going to be fish for them. If I made, you know, $25,000 a month, I could afford to go to Alaska and get in on that, but the 7
guys down here, average guy with a lunch bucket can’t do that. Stars, what else you got there, Jerry? I don’t want to talk on...
JG: And when did you retire, Paul?
PH: About the 1st of April in 1985. Two weeks beyond my earliest possible retirement date, and the reason I did that is I didn’t get an annuity check until the 1st of April, so that’s when I retired. I had worked something like 34 years and two months, or something like that. Well, I had some military time in there, too. I was in the Air Force. I think it was about three years, nine months of military.
JG: Thank you, Paul, for your time. I’ll leave the interview right here.

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Oral History
of
Paul W. Handy
Interviewed by:
Jerry Grover
Name: Paul William Handy
Date of Interview: March 21, 2000
Location of Interview: Home of Paul & Jean Handy
Vancouver, Washington
Interviewer: Jerry C. Grover
Years worked for Fish and Wildlife Service:
1958 - 1985
Offices and Field Stations Worked, Positions Held:
New London NFH, Minnesota – Biologist Trainee
Spearfish NFH, SD – Fishery Biologist
Valley City NFH, ND – Fishery Biologist
Marion, AL - In-Service Warm Water Fish Culture Training
School
Hebron NFH, OH – Assistant Hatchery Manager
Senecaville NFH, OH – Assistant Hatchery Manager
Washington, D.C. – Departmental Manager Development
Program
Garrison NFH, ND – Hatchery Manager
Alchesay NFH, AZ – Fish Hatchery Manager
Portland Regional Office, OR - Fishery Program – Operations
Portland Regional Office, OR - Fishery Program, Columbia
River Coordinator
Most Important Projects:
Warm & Cool water Fish Culture, Tribal Fishery Programs,
Lower Snake River Compensation Program, Columbia River
Fishery Program
Colleagues and Mentors:
Ansel Holloway, Howard Larsen, Galan Buterbaugh
Most Important Issues:
Pacific Coast Hatchery Construction Program, Pacific Salmon
Culture & Management Issues
ABSTRACT: Paul was a National Fish Hatchery person/
hatchery man. He began a comprehensive hatchery-oriented
career culturing a wide range of warm, cool, cold water species
throughout the U.S. that led to managerial jobs and a training
assignment in Washington, D.C. This experience led to being a
go-to person in the Portland Regional Office for the Columbia
River Basin’s expansive hatchery building and operation
programs requiring close coordination and astute political savvy
with the region’s Native American Tribes, the Northwest states
and other Federal agencies.
2
THE ORAL HISTORY
JG: This is Jerry Grover, a retired Ecological Services & Fishery supervisor in the Portland Regional Office and I am in Vancouver, Washington to do an oral history in the home of Paul W. Handy regarding his Fishery Program career with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. With us today is Paul’s wife Jean. Paul where were you born and raised?
PH: Good morning, Jerry. Paul Handy’s my name. I was born in Minneapolis in 1930, and I went to school at the University of Minnesota. Well, I graduated from high school in ‘48. I started at the University of Minnesota and I went two years, and I was such an outstanding student they thought that maybe I should, to be honest with you, I wasn’t on the dean’s list. I was flunking! I wanted to stay in school because I didn’t want to go into the Army. They told me, school is no longer a valid excuse for me because my grades were so poor. I decided that since I don’t want to go in the Army, I’m going down and enlist in the Navy. When I went down there, the Navy was full. The only people that were available was the Air Force, so I went in the Air Force for about almost four years.
When I came back and got back into the University of Minnesota it was by the sheer grace of God and a guy by the name of Doc , who said, “Okay, we’ll give you one more chance,” and I started out trying to go into forestry. That didn’t work because there were so many people in forestry already that it was essentially an overcrowded field, and they said, “Well, have you thought about Fish and Wildlife?” No I hadn’t thought about Fish and Wildlife, but if I can get a job, it’s better than being in forestry, so I ended up in fisheries and majored in fisheries. I’ll brag a little bit and say I graduated with a B average for about five years of college.
JG: What did you do at the Air Force?
PH: I ended up being in a mapping outfit, the 66th Squadron. I was a Staff Sergeant, and I supervised a section on aerial photo reconnaissance. We put, we took pictures, the airplanes took the pictures and we put them together, and we made maps out of what we put together.
JG: This is for what, target, for targeting?
PH: Yeah, for a lot of things.
JG: Any wars going on at that time?
PH: No, there was no wars going on at that time where I was, but we got shot at occasionally by the Russians because we were right along the border, and essentially trying to take pictures into the Russian occupied sector in Germany and we could... . We could do a pretty good job of it because we could shoot in, depending on weather conditions, 50 to 100 miles, and I’m sure what they we’re looking for is launching sites for various pieces of whatever Russia was assembling along the border, and you know, conditions weren’t really that good. It was 1951.
JG: Was the U-2 on board then. Were they taking the pictures or is that after?
PH: I think that was afterward a little while, but we could see, and there are ways, for what they were doing. No, I don’t think the U-2 was a big factor in surveillance at that time. I’m not sure of that, but I’m pretty sure.
JG: Sounds like you grew up a little bit in the military.
PH: Yeah. There was a lot of growing up.
Jean Handy: Two babies will do it.
PH: Yeah, two babies and having your back against the wall, and you come a long ways. Then I went to work for, the guy that hired me was probably the greatest individual that I have known in the Fish and Wildlife Service. His name is Ansel Holloway, and if there was ever a people’s manager, he was it. He was absolutely beyond!
He was actually one of the best individuals I have ever known, and I took the, whatever the entrance exam is, I don’t even know what they call it. I remember with my five point veteran preference, I was way up the list and could easily qualify first, second, or third once I had the diploma in my hand, okay. So Ansel then interviewed about four of us, and he said it was really quite easy because you’ve got to hire a three. So I was hired, but I couldn’t go to work until I had the ‘magic pigskin’ in my hand that says I have a Bachelor, a BS in Fisheries. Well, they drug their feet and what have you, but I finally did get it and started to work at New London, Minnesota [National Fish Hatchery] on about the 15th of March I think, in 1958, as a GS-5. I’m trying to remember how much I got.
JG: Was it about $3650?
PH: No, no, it was less than that, but it very quickly rose to 3650 [dollars]. It was about 29 [hundred] something, and the reason I paid so much attention to how much they paid is all the guys in high school that I had graduated with, several of them hadn’t gone into the military.
There were two or three that thought I was just absolutely out of my mind going back to college, and then I told them I was going to make $3,000 a year and they almost rolled on the floor they laughed so damn hard. This one guy in particular, he was putting in septic systems. Hell, he was making money hand over fist, and he said, “You’re crazy.” He said, “Come work with me.” He says, “You’ll get $10,000 a year,” and at that time $10,000 was a lot of money. But anyway, I went to New London and Ansel Holloway had laid out for me a three year training program in which I would be at one hatchery for six or eight 3
months and another hatchery for six or eight months and so on and so forth, and he tried to give me experience in two kinds of warm water fish culture and then cold water culture , and that’s what I did.
JG: Was Ansel Holloway a hatchery manager, or was he a supervisor in Minneapolis?
PH: He was a hatchery supervisor in Minneapolis. Really great, great individual
JG: It sounds like he was kind of a mentor to you.
PH: Oh boy, was he ever!
JG: And were there others, too?
PH: Yeah, I’m sure that almost everybody that came to you. Howard Larsen, for example. He was a mentor to all the people that came to him. He ended up as a Regional Director.
Then there was Galan Buterbaugh. Yeah, but everyone knew Ansel. I don’t know of a single, Bob Stevens in Albuquerque. I don’t know of a soul that was associated with that guy that didn’t think he just almost walked on water. Honestly, he never told you anything to egg you on to do something. Everything he said he could back up and did. A wonderful individual. He came through here a couple of years before he died. I spent an afternoon with him and thoroughly enjoyed it. But he’s a great guy, was a great guy, to get on with what in the hell I did.
JG: But he laid out a training program or development plan for you...
PH: Yeah, for the hatcheries, all in Region 3. I worked at New London NFH, and that was bass, bluegill, and primarily for the Farm Pond Program. Then I went to Spearfish [National Fish Hatchery, South Dakota, and that was all trout, and I worked there for about six or eight months. Then I went to Valley City [National Fish Hatchery], North Dakota, and that was northern pike and walleye, a few largemouth bass. Most of the bluegills we got out of New London and did our farm pond distribution from that. Then I went to Marion National Fish Hatchery, Alabama for the training course under Jack Snow.
JG: That was the Warm Water Fish Cultural School down there in Marion, Alabama.
PH: Right, and then we went back to, let’s see, Hebron [National Fish Hatchery], Ohio. Roy Crandall was the manager there, and that was bass, bluegill, and a channel catfish program. That’s where I started, that’s where I really became interested in catfish, and lived on the hatchery there and spent the weekends feeding catfish and never thought anything about it. There was no overtime pay. There was no special consideration except we only paid $12 every two weeks for our rent of a hatchery house. So I figured it was about, you know, kind of a break even situation.
JG: Were all those stations that you were at, Valley City, Spearfish, and all, did they have hatchery housing?
PH: They all had hatchery housing, but I was the lowest guy on the totem pole, and let’s see, I did not live at a hatchery house at any three of those stations.
And it was, well it was a little bit tough getting by. We had a couple of kids, and let’s see, when we were at Spearfish, she spawned another one. Up to three kids on a GS-7 salary, but we made it along all right.
After we got out of Marion -- Marion was really good in the respect that I got to work with or talk to people from other regions in warm water fish culture, and come to find out they had some damn good ideas, but we also had some good ideas. I found out that their approach to farm pond program management, I won’t say was totally different than ours, but it sure was a lot different in, in that they seemed to have one heck of a lot more contact with the Soil Conservation Service than we ever did. The Soil Conservation Service was pushing farm pond programs really hard for you know, reduction of runoff and siltation and so forth and so on. Okay, at Hebron I got promoted when I got out of school to a 7, and then I just thought life couldn’t be much better than that. At that time I was supposed to be in training and learning how to do the books, you know, pay the bills, do the books, all this and that plus...
JG: Obviously the day before secretaries and clerks in a hatchery.
PH: Yeah, oh yeah. But I was more interested in the fish production program, and with what I learned at Marion I thought, ‘Well hell, there’s no problem to this fish production, it’s simple.’ Well, I found out that it’s a little more difficult than you
really think it is. But we got into upgrading the bass stock with artificially inseminating goldfish and lots of things and were very successful in raising the production of Hebron.
But at about that time, the guy at Senecaville retired, Jim Walsh was his name. Senecaville [National Fish Hatchery], Ohio. The Regional Office wanted to know if I’d take a job in Senecaville as a GS-9, and I says, ‘Oh great, you bet as a 9 I’ll take a job there.’ “Well, when can you move?” I said, ‘Well yesterday I could be there.’ So lock, stock, and barrel, right in the middle of the production season, off we go. Three kids and my wife pregnant again, and Holy Christ, I don’t know what all happened, but we got there and there was a new house being built, and it was, you know, you walk into something like that and you think, “Oh my God, it’ a total calamity.” But we got busy on a catfish-rearing program, which was a heck of a lot of fun. We caught catfish out of the reservoir and spawned them, and that’s where I got to meet and know Kermit Sneed.
JG: When you talk about spawning catfish you’re talking about putting them in milk cans, or did you have pens?
PH: No, we had pens and had cans and pens so that you could pair them up the way...
PH: And Kermit gave us a lot of help. I remember we had some kind of a disease and now it’s, what is it CCVD [(channel catfish viral disease)]. Anyway, it’s a virus disease of catfish and I called up trying to get some answers, and this was a Friday 4
afternoon, and I think Kermit was at Stuttgart. I’m not sure. But anyway, I got a hold of him.
JG: Kermit Sneed, the director at Stuttgart Fish Health Research Laboratory, Arkansas?
PH: Yes, and he said, “Well, I can’t be up there much before Saturday afternoon.” I said, ‘Jesus Christ, it’s Friday.’ I said, ‘Where can you be?’ He said, “What’s the nearest airport,” and so I told him, and so I met him in Columbus, Ohio, on a Saturday afternoon. That guy fooled around with those catfish, looking at them and getting the history and everything else. I think I went to bed about 3:30 that day, that Sunday morning, and I thought, ‘ Holy smokes,’ this guy is about the most dedicated individual I’ve ever seen. Well, he slept up in the house and like 6:30 in the morning I hear him up talking to my wife, and you know, after a whole big three hours sleep. To make a long story short, I got him on the airplane later on that afternoon, and he told us what to do. We did it, brought the fish out of it, we got the fish healthy enough to where they started eating again. I then began to realize that there’s a lot of people working in the Fish and Wildlife Service that work in it for something more than money. He didn’t ask who was going to pay for the travel, anything. He just came up and did his job and went home. At the end of Senecaville tour, I went to Washington DC in that Management Development Training course, and that would be around 1961, I think.
JG: And you were still a GS-9 then?
PH: Yes.
JG: I think they had, what, they had the junior development training program and the middle management and the senior?
PH: I was in middle management. No, wait a minute. I think the junior was GS-7 & 9 and the middle course was GS-11 to 12's. I was in junior management then because I was a GS-9. But that was a pretty good deal because they paid you a fair...
JG: $6 a day as I recall.
PH: I don’t know something like that, but at any rate we went there. There were 4 kids, my daughter was already born. She was born in Senecaville. Anyway, we went there for nine months, and they put the customary pressure on me to stay. I don’t know Jerry, I just, I didn’t like it. So I went back to Senecaville for about two weeks before I was assigned a new hatchery in Garrison, North Dakota. Now that was a northern pike and walleye hatchery.
JG: That was part of the Garrison Diversion Project, the dam.
PH: Right, right. Now, as far as a mitigation hatchery, as per what we have here in the west, that was not. But the [Bureau] of Reclamation did go to bat for the Fish and Wildlife Service to obtain money for O[peration] and M[aintenance]. So I don’t know exactly what you call it . It would be a kind of a half of mitigation project. Anyway, the operation and hatchery and everything else was all contained into the budget for that Garrison complex, for the Garrison Diversion and the whole bit.
I’m thinking I went there in about ‘63, someplace, 1962 to ’63. I worked with the State of North Dakota. Had a very good relationship with them. We had probably the most successful northern pike production program in the United States. Keen Buss from Pennsylvania came out and actually worked with us for better than a week, week and a half, and for a guy of that stature to come out and take a look at our operation, it was kind of ego inflating I’ll say that. One of the things that we had that they did not have is we had a supply of northern pike that must have looked to everybody like the national debt because we had hundreds of female fish to pick from. I mean, we didn’t have to spawn 30 pounders. We didn’t have to spawn five pounders. We could take a nice female, eight to ten pounds, spawn it, and away we went, and that’s what we did, and there, it’s a nice size fish to work with. You don’t rupture eggs, and we had a very successful program.
JG: Were you using injections at that time, using gonadotropin or anything?
PH: No, not at all!
JG: You were just taking them right, just picking from the ripe females and males.
PH: We caught the fish in the reservoir, which is sometimes kind of a cold, halfway dangerous job in that you’re out there in the wind and a big, flat boat. But we had a good, a good situation. And so, I wrote a paper on propagation of northern pike. I don’t know whatever happened to it. I can tell you off the record what happened to it: essentially no trout production. We had a little Mickey Mouse program, 45 or 40,000 pounds there at Garrison though, but I can’t really say we were busting our hump producing trout.
JG: These were catchables?
PH: Yeah, mostly catchables. We had I’d say all catchables, and it was a, it was a little different program. But we had a good water supply, and we weren’t pushing the facility to the maximum, so we didn’t have lots of disease problems, and we just, it was an interesting. But I didn’t feel like it was overly challenging. I had a lot more interest in trying to get a muskie [muskellunge] program off the ground and do a little bit better job of raising northern pike, because we had a heck of a time with, you know, predation on themselves in the ponds.
JG: In the ponds, yeah, and if you leave them in there long enough, you come out with two big fish.
PH: Right, right. We beat some of those problems, but it was interesting. It was always something new, and we did a lot of things experimentally that probably should have been written up just because they failed. But at any rate, it was a fun time. And then I got an offer to go down, well by that time I had made a GS-11, and then got an offer to go to Alchesay [National Fish Hatchery in Arizona] as a GS-12. On the White River Indian Reservation, and being money hungry, I guess, maybe not money hungry necessarily, but feeling that if I was ever going to go any place I better get some experience with a different kind of fish culture, and at Alchesay [it] was really a combined 5
establishment. It had two hatcheries, William’s Creek up on the top and Alchesay down below, and total production, about a half million or so pounds [of trout].
I was there for about a year, and it was a different experience in that I had never run into supervising a big minority workforce and we had a minority workforce in the form of Indians. I could not conform to their method of working. When I hire somebody to work eight hours a day, I expect them to work eight hours a day. So on the first two weeks I had the privilege of getting rid of nine of them, and I’m sure everybody on that hatchery figured the tenth one’s going to be me because, and I thought, well, the heck with it, you know. The Fish and Wildlife Service is paying them money and they’re not working. I caught guys sleeping on feed sacks. They’d come to work late. They wouldn’t have their keys, their hard hat. They wouldn’t be clean, all kinds of things, and I just fired them, and I thought, hey, you know, you conform. Well when I fired the tribal chairman’s son, they said, “Handy, you’re going to get the big one today,” and believe it or not, I did not. I think part of that has to do with my daughter and the Tribal chairman’s daughter were both five years old, and they were both in Head Start, and they were the best buddies in the whole world. So it was pretty hard for him to scream discrimination when our daughters were playing together.
At any rate, we got that situation all ironed out, and we ended up with a very, very, in my opinion, a good working crew of almost all Native Americans. I think our biologist, a guy by the name of Gene Forbes, who later became hatchery manager at Coleman NFH in California, was our fishery biologist. We had maybe two or three other white guys, but all told, a crew of 21. I think we had like 14 Native Americans, and darnn sharp guys. Guys that would work, get out on a truck and do the distribution, and I thought we had a good crew when I left.
JG: Did you have to change your management style a little bit to accommodate the Native Americans?
PH: Well, I tell myself I didn’t, but yes, I have to say that you do have to change. You don’t have to accept less, but you’ve got to try to think how they think and how they look to their friends. I mean, it’s not cool or whatever you might call it to be jumping up and down for, and doing everything that quote, “whitie” says. I don’t want to use that word too bad, but what I’m saying to you is they wanted very definitely to continue to be the proud race that they are and I had to be very careful not to talk down to them. I had not thought I had until I started, you know, taking a good look at myself and saying, “Hey, you don’t want to be treated that way, why are you treating them that way?” So in that respect maybe there was a little growing up on both sides, at least I thought on my side anyway. I think that’s very valuable for anybody that’s in the management end of it to try to understand what you’re, not who, but what kind of problems you’re dealing with, and for sure they do not look on happenings of the day like we look on happenings of the day, and understand that. They’re willing workers when they know what’s expected of them, and make sure they know what’s expected of them and you know, try to be absolutely honest with them.
By the time I transferred, well, maybe I’m blowing smoke, but I thought we had a heck of a good workforce. It was something that was kind of different for me, but I think we had a very good workforce. Then I came to Portland.
I took a job in the Regional Office in Portland, and “in operations,” unquote. That really meant that I was brought in here to take over Galan Buterbaugh’s job who was going to Washington, DC. He went into Washington, DC, and operations was really in all honesty being run by a fellow by a name of Bruce Cannady who was getting close to retirement and was very much more interested in hatchery construction than he was in the day’s operations of the hatcheries.
JG: I recall at that time there was a fairly active construction program. I mean, there were new hatcheries coming on line at Quinault and Kooskia.
PH: Yes, and at . Makah, Dworshak, Warm Springs. All new National Fish Hatcheries, plus the rebuilding of Spring Creek. Spring Creek NFH was being rebuilt and with some major change. There were some minor changes at other facilities, I’d say at Coleman. Leavenworth had a fairly big change. So yeah, Bruce was really the Fish and Wildlife Service hatchery representative for all agencies relating to construction, and there’s just no way that one guy can do all that with about eight or ten big projects ongoing and the operations. So I kind of herded the operations end of the program along and to start with it, it herded me. Then when I’d get into difficulties I’d go talk to Bruce and say, “Hey, what should I do,” and he’d get me squared away, and I’d go along just fat, dumb, and happy until I ran into another problem. But that lasted for about three or four years and then...
JG: When you talk about operations Paul, let me interject, did that include doing the budgeting system and getting the funding for the hatcheries, the cyclical maintenance, hiring, firing, training?
PH: No, I did not get into much of the training. In fact, Marv Smith, the ARD [Assistant Regional Director for Fisheries] did that, but anything related to money, maintenance --all of that was my responsibility. Now I’m not saying I had the final word on it, but I was the guy that put the budgets together, met with the hatchery manager, said, “Hey, what do you think this is, the Taj Mahal,” or whatever. John Miller, the other assistant, did the production part of it and we had a pretty good working relationship with most of the managers, I’ll say. That’s what I did for about four years. And then a fellow by the name of Bill Bien came in and he did a lot of my grunt work, so to speak, and I took over some of Bruce’s construction work, and about that time is when Bruce retired. Bruce saw through to the completion of Dworshak, I believe.
And even though I was still operations, so to speak, I was more involved in construction than I had to, than when I first arrived on board. Of course as time developed, these construction projects were being completed so there was less and less work, and that’s when I got all involved in this programming;, well, at that time it was zero-based budgeting and that kind.
JG: Why all the construction at that time? What was the philosophy at the time? Why were we building hatcheries? 6
PH: Well, for example, most of the work that the Corps of Engineers had done on the Snake River, these hatcheries were built as mitigation for fishery losses.
JG: Are you talking about the Lower Snake River Compensation Plan?
PH: I’m talking in part that, but when Dworshak was built, that is in essence a Corps mitigation project. The dam and reservoir. On the lower Columbia River at Spring Creek, the Corps came in and totally modified it. This was mitigation to enhance the production program at Spring Creek beyond the existing capacity. It was totally funded (the construction) by the Corps of Engineers.
JG: Okay, so basically when Spring Creek was reconstructed then, you say 50 percent was mitigation and 50 percent was enhancement?
PH: Right.
JG: And it was all part of the Bonneville Dam second powerhouse and part of the Corps original projects on the lower river.
PH: Yes, right.
PH: And then, of course I was involved as a Fish and Wildlife Service representative on all mitigation projects on the Columbia River, including the Snake River dam projects – the Lower Snake River Compensation Plan. You know, we had several hatcheries in Oregon, several in Idaho that the Corps built in addition to what we’re talking about.
JG: So the philosophy at the time is basically to seek mitigation for water and power development projects on the Columbia and Snake Rivers.
PH: In the enabling legislation the language was already there, and in like Ice Harbor, the dam had been constructed and was in operation for ten years before we even, before there was any work being done toward completion of a mitigation hatchery.
JG: To mitigate the impact of the dam.
PH: Right, yeah, and we were perturbed. How’s that? That’s not too bad, and the Corps was too. The Corps wasn’t dragging their feet, and they certainly had a money source, and so…that’s…everything got rolling then.
JG: Getting the Corps off the dime and getting the funding to begin the mitigation was turned into the Lower Snake Compensation Plan, and the ten or eleven hatcheries mostly operated by the states.
PH: Yes, except for the rebuilding and reconstruction of the Service’s Hagerman NFH. And Spring Creek, yeah, and that was all, that was all in the package, and that’s, okay…that’s…. I when I retired in ‘85, and that’s what was happening here in Portland at that time.
There was a, it was really a going proposition. I just cringe when I see what’s happening now. Everything has stopped! I don’t know what I can do about it.
JG: What do you see happening now?
PH: Well, I can see the end to a sport fishing salmon resource that generated millions of dollars for lots of people, and there was lots of enjoyment, and I, that’s almost a thing of the past. You cannot, right now, go fishing with any assurance, I mean, you couldn’t set a date right this minute to go fishing on the 20th of August in the ocean and even be sure that you have something to fish for in the line of salmon and anything else.
JG: And that’s different from what it used to be?
PH: Oh man, yeah, a lot different. You’re down to one fish limit right now, and maybe they won’t even have a season on some of these things, and that just tears my soul apart because I’m a sport fisherman, and to have a recreational endeavor like that just shot down, it’s a crying shame. But it’s not something the U.S. government had total control over. When you talk about, you know, the high seas fishery and the vulnerability of runs that are beyond the three mile limit and all the rest of it. Greed, I think, on the part of a lot of other countries play an important role. But at any rate, there is still some sport fishing.
JG: It seems like, Paul, you’ve been pretty much a hatchery person all your life.
PH: Yes, I have.
JG: And you’ve seen the construction, an active construction program in Region 1, in the Columbia River Basin, in the northwest in general. We mentioned Quinault and Makah, the tribal hatcheries, Warm Springs and other tribal hatcheries as well as the mitigation facilities, Lower Snake Comp Plan. Your perspective now, is there some sector of the Northwest you’re saying that hatcheries have been a cause for the demise of salmon? That’s an ongoing issue. Have you got a comment on that?
PH: You bet I’ve got several, but I don’t know how many are good for the record. I’m saying this: if you’re talking about the demise of the runs of salmon and are attempting to put the blame on hatchery fish, I think you’re barking up the wrong ladder. It’s impossible to me, for me to believe that if a hatchery fish leaves a hatchery, goes out to the ocean, survives two or three years in the saltwater and comes back, that it is any less prepared for the eventualities of spawning than quote, “a wild fish.” Now nobody’s been able to define for me what a wild fish is, because every fish that exists was once wild in its heritage. I don’t care how you cut it, and I believe this. I do not think the, quote “wild fish” survive any better, unquote, than the so called domestic hatchery fish. If we’re going to have sport fishing for the kind of ordinary guy that picks up his lunch pail and goes to work and comes home every night, if we’re going to have sport fishing for those kind of people, you’re going to absolutely have to have hatchery production because it, this is the only way that there’s going to be fish for them. If I made, you know, $25,000 a month, I could afford to go to Alaska and get in on that, but the 7
guys down here, average guy with a lunch bucket can’t do that. Stars, what else you got there, Jerry? I don’t want to talk on...
JG: And when did you retire, Paul?
PH: About the 1st of April in 1985. Two weeks beyond my earliest possible retirement date, and the reason I did that is I didn’t get an annuity check until the 1st of April, so that’s when I retired. I had worked something like 34 years and two months, or something like that. Well, I had some military time in there, too. I was in the Air Force. I think it was about three years, nine months of military.
JG: Thank you, Paul, for your time. I’ll leave the interview right here.